A Reason To Love The Eighties

One of the things that I love most about 80s music is the intricacy. Incorporating various instruments and the way that they are all fit together creates a mindblowing multi-dimensional sound. Some may say it's 'over-production', but I think producers in the 80s were genius. There's the infectious riffs and strong beats, and all the little synth/guitar sounds here and there. I think of it as a FULL sound, every gap is filled with little details.  Add a good powerful voice, and that is perfection to me. I think of it as a beautiful piece of artwork with impecable detail.
This is a characteristic that resounds in pretty much every genre of music poppin' in the 80s, in Pop, Soul, Funk, New Jack Swing, Rock and Metal etc.

Also the 80s seems to be the decade when maybe there was a sense of unity. I don't know if this was the case, just how I see it. I say this because, if you listen to a relatively broad spectrum of 80s music over time, you will see that this decade was packed with genre-busting songs. For example, the trend of pop and soul artists crossing over into rock and sometimes even hard rock. Artists like Prince, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner etc. One of my favourite examples of this is Janet Jackson's 'Black Cat', she rocks it so hard! And it is definitely some heavy guitar.

And again, the same thing happened with Rock artists, using synth and horns alot more. You hear synth across many different rock songs of the 80s whether it's the main riff, obviously in Van Halen's Jump, or synth to fill the background, found in the songs of many more-commercial hard rock and AOR bands like Heart, Y&T, Danger Danger, Bon Jovi etc. And later in the decade towards the start of the 90s, horns started to appear in hard rock. Songs like 'Tall Dark Handsome Stranger' by Heart, 'Dude Looks Like A Lady' by Aerosmith and 'Lil Jack Horny' and 'Get The Funk Out' both by Extreme.

And the popstars in between, constantly challenging the stereotypical distinguishing aspects of the styles they belonged to, by borrowing elements of different genres creating the unique collective sound, that I think to this day, really belongs to the 80s. Also the 80s gave us the first taste of giants of different styles, teaming up to create something really special, like Aerosmith and Run DMC's 'Walk This Way'. This sense of merging, also showed through the artists outfits and costumes, but I will go into that another day.

So there's one reason, a big reason, why I love this decade .To me, it will always be the most exciting decade of music.

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